The invention relates to a holding device for chip cards which are used in vehicles, have the purpose of person-related collection of travel data and which have a card holder which guides the chip cards between a removal position and a read/write position, and have output means, the output means bringing about, after the actuation of a request element, transfer of a chip card in the read/write position into the removal position.
The collection, in particular, of working times and times of rest of the drivers of utility vehicles requires, because of the documentary value of this data, reliable protections for avoiding disruptions which are carried out with fraudulent intent, for example by briefly pulling on a chip card during the transmission of data between the data collection device and the chip card or by virtue of the fact that films or electrically conductive material are pushed forward into the holding device of the chip cards. On the other hand, there is the risk of functional faults owing to the considerable climatic fluctuations which occur in the environment in which a utility vehicle is used, and consequently temperature-related and moisture-related changes in the material and also the oscillation level and travel-related vibrations which occur while the utility vehicle is operating.
These mechanical oscillations can lead, for example, to rapid wear of contacts, that is to say to complete wearing through of the relatively thin surface contacts of the chip cards which are embodied as small gold plates if there are relative movements between a chip card which is in the read/write position and the set of read/write contacts which is assigned to the chip card.
Owing to the vehicle-related application, in terms of the manufacture and mounting of a holding device for the chip cards it is basically to be assumed that tolerances which are appropriate for large scale manufacture are provided, and depending on the tolerance situation a more or less large sensitivity to oscillation occurs between a chip card and the read/write contacts which are positioned on it. Considerable additional tolerances have to be taken into account in particular if the holding device for the chip cards is not manufactured as an autonomous assembly which is functionally complete but rather the card holder and the set of read/write contacts are mounted separately from one another, for example on a printed circuit board of a tachograph which is used as a data collection device. In addition, the levelness of printed circuit boards is subject to tolerances and to climate-related fluctuations, and the chip cards have relatively large differences in thickness and can be bent.